Osho sannyasin, Ma Shashin, says an individual might be incapable of violence but a crowd has a different psyche

Protesters were walking back to their village post-rally when they turned violent. Within a flash of a second, one person began pelting stones and bricks in the demonstration sloganeering against the administration. Others joined him instantly and charged at the police. Crowds turn unruly and dangerous. What transforms peaceful protesters into violent agitators?

Rarely does a single demonstrator, even if provoked, becomes violent. However, crowds easily adopt violence. Why? According to social psychologists, mob mentality turns individuals into conformists. To fit in with the rest of the group, individuals, including law-abiding individuals, become irrational. Driven by the mob’s mind they blindly follow others actions.

A single person tends to behave or act independently but that person, in a crowd, loses his inhibitions, defers blame, responsibility, accountability and/or judgment in a  crowd. He assumes group identity ignoring his guiding inner voice. In the crowd, he does what he would otherwise term as unlawful.

Moreover, as humans have instinctive responses, their responses intensify by group influences. Such situations can become dangerous. The ‘larger the group the greater the amplification of that crowd behaviour’. History and even present times have several examples of a mob killing those who committed blasphemy or were accused of being witches.

Let’s understand mob behaviour based on three major psychological theories. The Contagion theory, for example, is where one learns to smoke from a friend. It’s nearly a magnetic influence as a non-smoker feels it’s okay to smoke. According to the Convergence theory, people with common interests, motivation, and goals align, for example, college students or civil activists protesting against the administration. The Emergent-norm theory explains that mob behaviour results in collective action. People under strain assume a new norm and are stimulated to act both anti-socially and against their rationale. There are many examples of communal riots in our history.

Floyd Henry Allport, the father of experimental social psychology. holds this view: ‘The origin of crowd response is not by crowd members and the stimulus situation but it is the prepotent trend of the individual himself’. The trend escalates with crowd stimulus.

While there can be many factors leading to unlawful mob behaviour, Jung and Martin explain the cause for crowd behaviour. They say that ‘every individual possesses the innate ability for mob behaviour’. The ability is adjusted with socialisation by social conditioning and social training. However, in a crowd situation, humans are possessed by the primitive, unconscious impulses that abort social conditioning and training. So, do humans become more powerful in crowds and give expression to their suppressions? Or are we humans responsible for our conduct regardless of the predisposition to adopt mob mentality for conforming to groups?

Consider this scenario to understand mob mentality. All the villagers draw water from a well. Until one day, the king and his Minister see that all those who drank water from the well have become insane. In a few days, all of them turn mad and they say that the king and the minister are mad. Later, these two confer and later decide that it’s best for them to also drink water from the well if they want to survive in the village.

Further, Jung and Martin say that our suppressions and repressions lead to such behaviour. What is the solution?

Osho says: “When you are angry with someone and you throw your anger at him, you are creating a chain reaction. Now he too will be angry. This may continue for the rest of your lives and you will go on being enemies. How can you end it? There is only one possibility. You can end it only in meditation, nowhere else, because in meditation you are not angry with someone: you are simply angry.”

This difference is basic. You are not angry with someone. You are simply angry and the anger is released into the cosmos. You are not hateful towards anyone. If hate comes, you are simply hateful and the hate is thrown out. In meditation, emotions are not addressed. They are unaddressed. They move into the cosmos, and the cosmos purifies everything.

It is just like a dirty river falling into the ocean: the ocean will purify it... In meditation, you are throwing yourself into the cosmos to be purified. All the energy that you throw is purified in the cosmos. The cosmos is so vast and so great an ocean, you cannot make it dirty. In meditation, we are not related to persons. In meditation, we are related directly to the cosmos.”

“To grow one’s own insight, one needs to be deeply meditative, very alert and aware. The crowd lives a kind of sleepy, unconscious life; it makes no effort at awareness; it lives in a mechanical, robot-like.”

Osho says: Why do people feel so happy in a crowd? Why does happiness in a crowd become so infectious? Because in a group they fall, they become unconscious. They lose their individuality. Then they are happy, then there is no worry, then there is no responsibility…Beware of mobocracy and be alert.

It would be appropriate to end this in Osho’s words: “A group can have a mind — not a soul.”